Accused killer no patsy: witness
Bandidos biker one of six charged in massacre
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/08/2009 (6149 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
LONDON, Ont. — It was another side of Wayne Kellestine for the Bandidos trial jury to consider — “a perfect patsy,” rather than crazed killer.
Kellestine’s defence team offered a different theory Wednesday as to how eight Toronto Bandido motorcycle club members were shot to death — pinning the plan to kill on a group of ambitious Manitoba bikers.
But M.H., the Crown’s star witness, disagreed with defence lawyer Ken McMillan and stuck to his version about what happened on Kellestine’s southwestern Ontario farm on April 8, 2006, when the eight were shot dead.
M.H., a former Winnipeg Bandido, completed his testimony Wednesday after almost three weeks in the witness box at the trial of six men each facing eight counts of first-degree murder.
McMillan was particularly struck by how the Winnipeg Bandidos, specifically M.H., were willing to listen to Kellestine, then fall in behind each victim as they were led out to be executed.
M.H. said he had watched two men be led out, and heard “pop, pop, pop,” before he stepped forward to follow Kellestine and George (Pony) Jessome — then watched Kellestine kill him.
“Why would you do that?” McMillan asked.
“I don’t know, I just did,” M.H. said.
“You had to know that Boxer (national president John Muscedere) and Crash (George Kriarakis) were executed and Pony was being taken out to be executed as well,” McMillan said.
“Hindsight, I guess,” M.H. said.
But McMillan persisted, reminding M.H. he had described Kellestine as a “crazy wild man, singing, laughing, doing a jig… acting bizarre.”
M.H. had a shotgun. Dwight Mushey had a sawed-off shotgun and Winnipeg chapter president Michael Sandham had two guns.
“You guys didn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to. You could say, ‘I don’t think so,’ and you could have blown Wayne’s head off,” McMillan said.
“I suggest you were doing the killing,” he added.
“You can suggest all you want,” M.H. replied.
Kellestine was their only connection to the Toronto chapter, McMillan said, and the Winnipeggers left “the whole mess” in his yard: “You guys were set up as the only chapter in Canada and you had the perfect patsy back here in Ontario.”
“I disagree,” M.H. said.
— The Canadian Press